“LET FACTS BE SUBMITTED TO A CANDID WORLD”

So, let’s revisit that American foundation document, “The Declaration of Independence.”

IN CONGRESS, July 4, 1776.

The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America,

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, –That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.–Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

OK, first of all, nobody in the Occupy movement is calling for overthrow of the government.  For one thing, that’s a certain route to violent suppression .  But–”Governments…deriv(e) their just powers from the consent of the governed, –That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government.”  What we who are in the 99% are saying is that the current government of the United States, whether “Republican” or “Democrat,” is not pursuing policies that are conducive to our “Life,Liberty, and pursuit of Happiness.”There has, once again, been “a long train of abuses and usurpations.”  That would seem to indicate that it is, once again, our “right and duty” to “throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for (our) future security.”

Next in the Declaration come the “Facts submitted to a candid world,” a detailing of the “repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny.”  Let’s read through them and see to what extent they still, or once again, apply.

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

OK….I could spend the whole hour talking about that item alone.  The only difference is that, instead of a single, mad monarch sitting on the throne England, our modern “he” is our Congress, which is held in thrall to special interests, and does their bidding rather than doing what is “wholesome and necessary for the public good.”  Let’s see–universal single-payer health care, serious regulation of our banking and financial sector, meaningful environmental legislation, the legalization of at least medical marijuana–these and many more causes enjoy widespread public support and would bring widespread public benefit, but are not “politically possible” because they would reduce or eliminate the profits of certain corporate “persons” who are, apparently, more equal than us mere flesh and blood persons.

He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

The most outstanding current example of this is how the federal government is interfering with state medical marijuana programs, from the ruling in Raich vs. Ashcroft in which the Supreme Court held that marijuana grown in somebody’s back yard for their personal consumption was somehow covered by the interstate commerce clause and thus subject to federal law, to the current DOJ campaign against any kind of business providing marijuana to people with medical needs.  Other examples:  the not-so-strict federal “do not call” law superseded Wisconsin’s stricter statute, and a wide array of local environmental regulations.

”It is the 1970s in reverse. Then, the feds stepped in with more stringent standards than the states to ensure that the environment was protected,” said Steve Hinchman, a staff attorney with the Conservation Law Foundation in Maine. ”Now, as states get ahead of the federal government, they’re stepping in to protect industry at the expense of people who are forced to breathe this air.”

That was said of the Cheney administration, but Obama has, according to many observers, been no great improvement on Cheney.

He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

Nothing domestic here–but look at the role the U.S. has played in supporting dictators and repressing popular movements around the world–think Palestine, think Pakistan, Indonesia, fill in the blank.  Sure, we helped topple Qadhafi, but he was not only repressing dissent in Libya, he was about to ask to be paid for his oil in gold, rather than U.S. dollars.  That was the straw that broke the camel’s back.  The Syrian government can shoot or torture anyone it wants, apparently, as long as they don’t challenge U.S. hegemony.  The Occupy Declaration echoes this:

• They have perpetuated colonialism at home and abroad.
• They have participated in the torture and murder of innocent civilians overseas.

OK, back to the Declaration of Independence:

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.
He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.
He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

Two hundred years ago, the speediest land transportation was a fast horse.  Today, the ruling class has made legislative bodies “uncomfortable and distant”  by raising the cost of campaigning so high that the only way to run for office with any hope of success is to be independently wealthy, or to be dependent on contributions from the ruling class–who will not support anyone who does not support them.  As a result, our state and national governments are primarily concerned with maintaining the privileged position of those who have bought them, leaving the rest of us  exposed to various economic and social “convulsions within,” all the while scaring everyone they can with the danger of “invasion from without.”  Again, the Occupy Declaration touches on this point:

• They have donated large sums of money to politicians, who are responsible for regulating them.

The D of I, again:

He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.

This is one of the few issues where I have some sympathy for the English position.  One of the complaints of the Europeans who settled what is now the USA was that the English wanted to keep them east of the Appalachians, and reserve the territory west of the mountains for the original inhabitants.  Because of that, and because the English were concerned about their colonies being subverted by too many non-English immigrants,  Crown policy attempted to limit the number of Europeans who invaded Turtle Island. Those doing the invading, on the other hand, sought safety in numbers.  To me, it is one of the great ironies of US immigration policy that a bunch of people of European descent are trying to stop native people from Mexico and Central America from entering this country–a trade and migration route that predates European arrival by thousands of years.  And, of course, there’s the further irony that it is US foreign trade policy that has destroyed the economies of these people’s native countries, pushing them to come here because, as Willie Sutton said, “it’s where the money is.”  The Occupy Declaration touches on immigration only obliquely, saying

• They determine economic policy, despite the catastrophic failures their policies have produced and continue to produce.

Back to the Declaration of Independence:

He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers.
He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.
He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance.

These three provisions are all about the proliferation of bureaucracy and the perversion of civil government by money and power, which is at the heart of the complaint of the Occupy movement.

He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.

He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.

Hey, no problem!  We’ll just buy the legislators and get them to approve the maintenance of a large standing army–and make sure it looks like it’s never  a time of peace!  And that bought legislature will never question the importance of military appropriations, making our military effectively “independent of and superior to the Civil power.”  Quoth the Occupiers:

• They have perpetuated colonialism at home and abroad.
• They have participated in the torture and murder of innocent civilians overseas.
• They continue to create weapons of mass destruction in order to receive government contracts.

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:

If I were a right-winger, I’d start raving about U.N. black helicopters at this point, but that, in my opinion, is pure paranoia.  The real way in which America has been “subject(ed) to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws,” has been U.S. participation in NAFTA and the WTO, both of which subordinate local environmental and labor safeguards to the profit motives of transnational corporations.

music:  REM, “Cuyahoga“

For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:
For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:

The U.S.A. accounts for nearly half of the world’s military spending, but it’s invisible to most of us:  our armies are spread across over 700 overseas military bases.  The Americans to whom this is not invisible are the families of our soldiers, often from small towns where U.S. government/corporate policy destroyed the local economy and job market, leaving many young people with no choice but the military.  And the second point, “protecting (military personnel) from punishment for any Murders which they should commit”?  That’s why we have (kind of) withdrawn our armies from Iraq–the government we installed refused to give us carte blanche to go on killing civilians and getting away with it.  Gee, the U.S. has been murdering civilians in Iraq with impunity ever since the invasion–What’s the big deal?  Oh, well, we can keep on killing civilians–even American citizens–in Pakistan and Yemen, and probably some other place we haven’t heard of yet.  All is not lost.

For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:

As The Living Theater used to exclaim, “I cannot travel without a passport!”  Nowadays, the problem is not the “cutting off of Trade,” but the opening up of trade:  Chinese imports have destroyed US manufacturing capacity, and US grain exports have destroyed Latin American agriculture.  In both cases, the people lose and the corporations win.  On the other hand, in the 18th century, individuals could travel without passports, in most places.  Nowadays, governments use their passport authority to keep people out of their countries:  here in the U.S., Palestinian Fulbright scholars, German publishers, Afghani women’s rights activists, and English environmental activists, among others, have been excluded so that they will not infect the American public with their subversive ideas.

For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:

Since our government has been taken over by corporate interests, our tax system has, in essence, been changed without our consent:  the share of government revenue that comes from corporate taxes has shrunk, so that the burden of supporting corporate government falls predominantly on the shoulders of individuals of modest means, who have to deal with not only income taxes and sales taxes, but property taxes, which keep rising as municipalities receive less money from state and national government coffers.

For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury:

This issue is not on Occupy’s radar, but it is a serious one.  According to PBS, 95% of all criminal cases never go to a jury; they are decided by what is called “plea bargain,” but should more properly be termed “blackmail.”  What happens is this:  prosecutors charge a defendant with everything they can possibly think of, a laundry list that will likely result in decades of prison time, but then inform their victim that if he or she will plead guilty to just one of the charges, or, in the case of drug busts, turn someone else in, they will avoid the expense of a jury trial and, the likelihood of much longer incarceration.  Maybe the defendant is innocent, or was acting on principle, but the pressure to agree to a plea bargain is overwhelming, 95% of the time, it seems.  Deprived, indeed, of the “benefits of Trial by Jury.”

For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences

Uuhh…ever heard of “extraordinary rendition”?

For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies:
For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:
For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.
He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.
He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

Several claims in this section of  the “facts submitted to a candid world” seem to me to duplicate ones that have already been stated, but the last one, about plundering the seas, and so on, while it was set in a military context at the time, is true today in a corporate framework.  Corporate fishing has plundered our seas, and globalization has “burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.”

He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.

Blackwater.  Wackenhut.  Corrections Corporation of America.  ‘Nuff said.

He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.

The modern parallel of this charge is, again, the way exploitive corporations have destroyed communities.  For example, in the Appalachian coal fields, mountaintop removal provides a very few people with good-paying jobs–destroying the country and culture they live in.  And, lastly…

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

Again, my sympathies lie with the Native Americans, who only subjected us  undocumented European immigrants to “undistinguished destruction” after we did the same to them.  When all is said and done, all of us who are not of Native American descent are trespassers on this continent.  In the 21st century, we’re just accessories after the fact, so to speak, but many of the framers of the Declaration of Independence actually killed Native Americans in order to steal their land.  This theft kind of erodes the “sacred honor” of our nation’s founders, but, at this point, hey–it is what it is.  Nowadays in America, we don’t get real politically-inspired mayhem–just the threat of it, trumpeted by our national insecurity apparatus.  And, finally….

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our British brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.

We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.

We, too, have “Petitioned for Redress in humble terms…have appealed to (the) native justice and magnanimity” of our allegedly representative government, decade after decade, issue after issue.  How many on-line petitions did you sign today? At this point I am reminded of the words of a populist activist who was active about halfway between the time of the Declaration of Independence and the present day, William Jennings Bryan:

We do not come as aggressors. Our war is not a war of conquest. We are fighting in the defense of our homes, our families, and posterity. We have petitioned, and our petitions have been scorned. We have entreated, and our entreaties have been disregarded. We have begged, and they have mocked when our calamity came.

We beg no longer; we entreat no more; we petition no more. We defy them!

For all his fervor and popular appeal, Bryan went down to defeat, at the hands of the same forces we face today.  He, a very Jeffersonian Democrat, was overwhelmed by Republican promises of growth and prosperity, and slurs that associated him with “anarchists,” who were to voters of that day what “socialists” are to modern American voters–boogeymen.  Some things don’t change much, it seems.

But some things have changed.  Unlike the eighteenth and early twentieth centuries, we no longer live in an era when resources and possibilities seem unlimited.  Promises of future growth and prosperity now ring hollow, and only the delusionaries in the Tea Party retain their faith in the Corporate American Dream.   We have, in the words of the Declaration, endured “a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny.”  It is, indeed, time to “alter our former system of government.”  If we don’t, we will fall even further under the power of sociopathic corporate “persons,” who, like vampires, have no thought of altruism, only self-aggrandizement.

To borrow the words of the chief writer of The Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson, we must “swear upon the altar of God, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.”

music:  Patti Smith, “People Got the Power“

THE MYTH–AND THE REALITY–OF “RECOVERY”

Our government continues to cheerlead for “recovery.”  No, not twelve-step recovery, which would be wonderful, but the kind of recovery an alcoholic has when he is over his last binge and is cruising for the right  opportunity to start the next one.

The administration, and its “loyal opposition” agree that Americans need to start spending money on consumer goods again, need to start buying houses again.  Uh…what is wrong with this picture?

Well, to begin with, all the so-called “economic growth” of the last thirty years has been fueled by debt.  “I owe, I owe, so off to work I go,” runs the old joke, but now there’s a problem–there’s no work to go to, for an increasing number of people, and, with the housing market in the toilet, people can no longer borrow against their home equity for spending money.  Besides, more and more people are coming to the realization that they already have more useless junk than they know what to do with.  It’s not for nothing that the you-store-it biz has mushroomed right along with consumer debt, which peaked at about 2.5 trillion dollars as the economy maxed out in 2008, but is still well above the two trillion mark.  If you’ve got more stuff than you can fit in your home, what do you need more stuff for?

The other big hope for being able to renew our societal binge, er, “recovery,” is “increased housing starts.”   I have news for you.  “Increased housing starts” is the moral equivalent of “another line of cocaine” or “another fifth of whiskey” or “another pack of cigarettes.”  It may help our country feel better in the short-term, but in the long-term, it’s a renewed commitment to stumbling down the road to ruin.   Building more houses would likely mean urbanizing more rural land, which would require our financially shaky cities to somehow raise more money to build more infrastructure, and would definitely mean cutting down more trees to make more lumber, using more oil to make more asphalt shingles and more vinyl siding,  burning more oil to build more roads and more power lines and more fossil-fuel powered electric generating capacity–all the things we don’t need to be doing more of if we intend to reduce our species’ carbon footprint and keep the only life-supporting planet we know of habitable.

And, of course, there’s the little practical consideration that there are already  18.4 million houses sitting empty in America– three-quarters of them for rent, for sale, foreclosed, or simply abandoned.  The other quarter are “second homes” where the wealthy go for their vacations.   it’s still a lot of inventory–over five vacant dwellings for every homeless man, woman and child in the country–but, I digress..  The housing market is swamped,  credit is still tight, and home prices are still in free fall, so building subdivisions on spec like we did in the good ol’ days is a financially indefensible move.  Sometimes our state religion of radical fundamentalist materialist economics does make sense. Sometimes, but not often, and certainly not in a timely fashion.  We should have figured this out sixty or seventy years ago.  We wouldn’t be in nearly the mess we’re in now if we had…but, again, I digress.

Back to our topic–OK, next, let’s not talk about military spending—hey, neither the Democrats nor Republicans will, in any meaningful way–they know who’s got ‘em by the short hairs.  Believe you me, our political duopoly will pull the plug on every social and environmental program they can  slash before they cut military spending, even though that’s what’s really driving this country into bankruptcy.

“Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain,” boys and girls!

So, as I said, when our government talks about “recovery,” what they really mean is “another binge.”  What would a genuine, 12-step style recovery be, on a national level?

Let’s look at the “twelve step program” and see what we can figure out.

• Step 1 – We admitted we were powerless over our addiction – that our lives had become unmanageable
• Step 2 – Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity
• Step 3 – Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood God
• Step 4 – Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves

Hmm….don’t see much of this happening.  Most of the people who are even willing to talk about God or “a power greater than ourselves” seem to believe He (most emphatically He, in their cases) is somehow on our side and wants us to binge.

The “Transition” movement is the best place to find a collection of people who have at least begun to realize that “Western Civilization” as we have known it all our lives is an unsustainable 200-year fossil-fuel fueled binge that is about to be over, whether we like it or not, whether we are ready to quit or not, and that our future options range from gracefully continuing the best elements of human culture in much more materially sparse conditions, at best, to being grumpy, sociopathic, fascistic, impoverished “dry drunks” somewhere in the middle, to complete extinction of all higher life forms on the planet due to unbridled human hubris, at worst.

It is interesting to note that those champions of “God wants us to keep on binging,” the Tea Partiers, have lately turned their sights on the Transition movement.   It’s hard to predict what will come of that collision.  The Transition movement genuinely embodies the Tea Party’s ostensible ideals of local control, self-empowerment, neighborhood interdependence, and participatory democracy, while the corporate-controlled Tea Party uses these ideals as a cover for a movement that seeks to rationalize complete personal and corporate self-indulgence and a shocking neglect of the effect such behavior will have on future generations–these people talk about “right to life” and “protecting the unborn”?  They have some nerve!   Once again, I digress…

Meanwhile, it seems to me that a lot of people in the Transition movement–and “a lot” is a very relative term, since in my opinion there are far too few people in it overall–anyway, a lot of Transitioners haven’t grasped the importance of the spiritual dimension of Transition.  They see it as a technological, social, political problem, not as an addiction that we in the movement are, as individual egos, fairly powerless to combat in ourselves, let alone others, until we align with a deeper, more pervasive and universal energy and intelligence (which IS how I understand the word “God,”at least in this context), and create, in ourselves, a “turning about in the deepest seat of consciousness” that alters “who” we are, and how we express our identities, values, and goals.  Intellect alone simply cannot do this.

So, a lot less Bible-banging and a lot more internal inquiry are what is called for.  Next?

“Step 4– A searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves”

Whew….I could write a book!

Let’s start with A fairly well-known statistic:  that the US, which is 5% of the world’s population, consumes 25% of its resources.  Now, follow me while I do a little math with you.   The richest 20% of Americans actually consume 85% of that 25%, meaning that 1% of the world’s population, the richest Americans, are consuming about 21% of the world’s resources, while those of us in the bottom 80% of the US wealth profile, who constitute 4% of the world’s population, are consuming…about 4% of the world’s resources.

In other words, those who are taking five times their fair share of the world’s resources are leading the charge to cut social services, environmental protections, and limits on the ability of the wealthy to unscrupulously become even wealthier, all the while chanting the mantra of “job creation”–I guess that means so they’ll hire more servants if we’re willing to work for a pittance?  In addition to opposing any kind of income redistribution, many wealthy, conservative Americans are also fighting tooth and nail to prevent action on climate change.  They are determined to hang on to their unfair share, and believe they have the resources to pull through whatever the future may bring, and to hell with the rest of us.  “Class warfare”?  You bet!

The pity of it is, that even though most of us are technically not consuming more than our fair share of the economic pie, there is more pie being served now than will be available in the future, as we run up against one resource depletion after another.  Peak oil is just the tip of the iceberg.   Think peak coal, peak uranium, peak phosphorus, peak water,  not to mention peak money, which means that all those cool high-tech solutions to the world’s environmental problems will be increasingly difficult to finance.  World wealth, at least in material terms, has nowhere to go but down.  Going with that flow would be much easier than fighting it, but American President after American President has proclaimed more or less what Barack Obama reiterated in his inaugural address:

“We will not apologize for our way of life nor will we waver in its defense.”

Sorry, folks, this is not “a change I can believe in.”  It’s not a change, and it’s certainly not “a searching and fearless moral inventory” of our American self.

And then there’s the way we have secured that unfair share for the American elite.  The US government maintains somewhere between 700 and a thousand military bases overseas, depending on how you count them.  The US accounts for over 40% of world military spending all by itself, and has intervened militarily in the affairs of other countries over a hundred and thirty times in the last century or so, to keep oil and other things flowing “our” way.

We recently had the bizarre spectacle of outgoing U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates calling for other countries to increase their military spending.  To continue with our 12-step analogy, this is like a mean drunk saying he’s being mean because nobody else has the nerve and somebody has to do it, and that everybody he knows would be better off if they were meaner and drank more, yadda yadda.  Military spending is the problem, not the solution.   If we weren’t so hellbent on military protection, we could fix the planet up nice enough so that nobody would have anything to fight over, and it would be cheaper than maintaining standing armies.

So much for “a fearless moral inventory.”

Wow, eight steps to go–let’s take a musical break.

Greg Brown:  “Poor Backslider“

OK, next in the 12 steps:

• Step 5 – Admitted to God, to ourselves and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs
• Step 6 – Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character
• Step 7 – Humbly asked God to remove our shortcomings

Gee….I’m not sure if the distance between this  and our country/most of its inhabitants is best measured in miles, astronomical units, or light years.  Still, it happened to Paul on the road to Damascus (although, from my point of view as an amateur Bible scholar, his was a less than complete transformation that has warped the Christian Church ever since–but again, I digress).

Now, once upon a time, one of America’s leading psychologists started doing research into how to produce “aha” moments in people–those critical junctures in our growth when we have the openness and insight to go through “admitting the exact nature of our wrongs,”  feel “ready to have those defects removed by a power greater than ourselves,” and “ask to have those defects removed.”  The researcher found a system that seemed to work pretty reliably, and one of his associates shared it with “Bill Wilson,” the founder of the 12-step program, who tried it out and emphatically agreed with him.

Our government’s response to this research was to demonize and jail the principal researchers and do everything it could to suppress the research and make sure it was never applied to large numbers of people, an effort that has been strongly resisted by those aware of the society-changing potential of this research, but that has, at least at this point in time, ended in a victory for the government and the unstable, unsustainable status quo.  Can you say “United States of Denial,” boys and girls?

The researcher, in case you’re unfamiliar with this bit of American history, was Timothy Leary, his associate was Aldous Huxley, and the technique, of course, was conscious reprogramming through the use of psychedelics, which the government has spared no effort to suppress.  It’s not for nothing that the DEA’s in-house publication is called “The Microgram.”  There’s plenty of coke, speed, and narcotics around, but good luck finding psychedelics–that’s been their only real victory in the “war on some drugs.”

So, somehow, without the kind of chemical assistance that was available from the 60′s through the 90′s, , a whole lot of Americans, enough to be an effective political force, are going to have to realize–as in, “have it become part of their reality”–that this country, its society  and its economy, are on the wrong track, and, as the next 4 steps declare,

• Step 8 – Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all
• Step 9 – Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others
• Step 10 – Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it
• Step 11 – Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood God, praying only for knowledge of God’s will for us and the power to carry that out
• Step 12 – Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to other addicts, and to practice these principles in all our affairs

OK,”Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all“

Wow, that’s quite a list–from the inhabitants of the Maldives, whose home is being overwhelmed by the ocean because of our carbon emissions, to the working people of Mexico and the U.S., whose livelihoods have been destroyed by so-called “Free Trade” treaties like NAFTA, to the people of China, who live in virtual slavery to produce cheap consumer goods for us, to the whole web of life in the Amazonian and African rain forests, which are being torn asunder to put beef on the fancy tropical wood  tables of white people, to our depopulated and acidified oceans–and on, and on, including ourselves, who have been spiritually impoverished by our predilection for short-term material wealth and comfort at the expense of the long-term health of the planet and all its inhabitants, from the simplest microbe to the wisest and most complex first people, who lived for eons in harmony with the planet we are now on the brink of destroying.

“Making amends”–just what would that entail?

Where to begin?  I’m going to have to free-associate, so what you are about to hear/read is in no particular order.

We need to stop mining and burning coal.  Tomorrow.  Yesterday, even, if that were possible.

We need to quit all the operations that turn tar into oil.  I love you, Hugo Chavez, but you are doing good things with bad money.  Stephen Harper, I think you’re a creep, you deserve a trial and a chance to prove you are not a corrupt, selfish sonovagun who should be stripped of your wealth, and whose supporters should be stripped of their wealth, and driven from the halls of power with bull whips.  Well, maybe cream pies.  Shaving cream pies.

We need to cut our oil production way back–say, assume that known reserves that can be accessed without undue ecological stress need to last about five hundred to a thousand years, cut production to that level, and prioritize oil use accordingly.

We need to quit “fracking” for natural gas.  If it escapes from the ground without much assistance, that’s wonderful, but, as with oil, we need to cut back on production to make sure it lasts.  Besides, clean water will get you through times of no natural gas much better than natural gas will get you through times of no clean water. Fracking is a way to create hell on earth–have fun drinking your flammable water!

This obviously means massive changes in the way we in the First World live our lives.  That’s OK, there’s nothing on TV anyway, it’s more fun to entertain yourself and your friends than it is to stand in awe of the latest pop star or unreality show., and doing the genuine physical labor involved in basic human activities is better for you than trying to make time to go to the gym or jog.

We need to do a combination of disbanding and redirecting our military personnel and expenditures so that the troops are doing positive things, like assisting in environmental remediation efforts around the world.  Such money as we can genuinely afford to spend without borrowing from the Saudis and Chinese should likewise be invested in environmental remediation.  Believe me, the investment will pay off like no other.

We need to plant a lot of trees, and otherwise reorient ourselves towards basic, local agriculture and commerce.  I’m going to talk about this a more in the next segment of the show, a review of Albert Bates’ new book, “The Biochar Solution,”  so I will skip over it lightly for now.  Let’s get back to the attitude stuff.  It’s more basic than the technique, because without a change in attitude, the technique is useless.

We need to “Continue… to take personal inventory and when we (are) wrong promptly admit.. it“  because old habits die hard…they like to find new ways to express themselves.  As His Holiness the Dalai Lama has observed, change is rarely a sudden, sharp turn–it’s more like a curve on a railroad track, where you barely seem to be changing direction at any given time, but after a while you realize you are going North instead of South.  That is a good thing.  We don’t need to “go South” any further than we have already gone.

That’s not an excuse for foot-dragging, though.  It’s vitally important that we start walking the walk and talking the talk as soon as we possibly can, never mind if OUR mind is thinking the thought.  The mind is a drunken monkey–you just have to not believe everything you think.

“What’s with all this woo-woo about prayer and meditation and conscious contact with ‘God’ and “praying to know God’s will” and ‘spiritual awakening’?  I thought this show was about politics, and here you are getting all New-Agey on me.  Whassup?”

The Green Party is, at its very best, a party of those who have had a “spiritual awakening” and felt called to translate it into politics. We went up on the mountain and experienced something almost unspeakably profound, and part of that exsperience was a directive to come down off the mountain and into the world, without forgetting what we had seen, and live our vision in the world.

As I have detailed before, our party’s lineage springs from environmental and social movements, such as bioregionalism, the anti-nuclear movement, and the movement for participatory democracy, all of which, ultimately, had their genesis in the spiritual awakening that Messrs. Huxley and Leary attempted to bring about, and that has been so thoroughly distorted and stifled by our government and its supportive corporatocracy ever since  They need ants, not self-realized, autonomous individuals who look within for direction rather than submit unquestioningly to authority.  We are not talking about going to the mega-church and having a wealthy, oily voiced pastor tell us what the Koch brothers want us to think and live and how they want us to vote.  We are more along Quaker lines in this movement, calling for everyone to contact the highest wisdom they can find in their own hearts, and then join with others who do the same, and conduct a truly free, unprejudiced inquiry into what the highest truth and wisest course of action might be  There is no workable solution that can be imposed on the unwilling by a slim majority.  Daunting as this challenge may seem, I believe it’s possible.  The alternatives are unthinkable.

music:  Roseanne Cash, “I Want a Cure

TRUTH IN STRANGE PLACES

It’s been a while since I made any “Truth in Strange Places” awards, so I’ll make up for that by giving out three of them this month, to Nashville’s Congressman Jim Cooper, former President Bill Clinton, and current “Drug Czar” Gil Kerlikowske.

Cooper gets his award for this quote:

But when you look at TN Blue CrossBlue Shield you see a company that claims to be non-profit but just built a brand-new $400 million headquarters in Chattanooga, and they leveled a small hill to build their headquarters. And I’ve discovered the Blues(BCBS) nationwide get a billion dollars every year from the federal government. You see those sort of abuses and you think, ‘Can’t we do better than this?’ There are countless tens of thousands of people in our area and millions across Tennessee who need a fairer, better deal. Why can’t we do that? Truth is, the insurance lobby has the most powerful lobby in all of American history. They’re so powerful there really isn’t an oversight committee in Congress. They got in 1946 a provision that basically banned congressional oversight, which is the catbird seat if you’re an industry. Very few industries if any have had that sort of privilege. Plus they get exemption from antitrust laws. I think they should be competitive, private businesses — not favored with all these government perks, and that’s the way they’ve been for a long time.

Thanks for coming so  close to telling like it is, Jim, even if you don’t agree with me that these corporate persons deserve capital punishment for contributing to the death and suffering of so many  real human beings.

And Bill Clinton?

He called U.S. free trade policies in Haiti, which helped destroy the country’s ability to feed itself and pushed hundreds of thousands of people out of the countryside and into the cities, as well as into illegal immigration to the U.S., “a devil’s bargain,” and said

Since 1981, the United States has followed a policy, until the last year or so when we started rethinking it, that we rich countries that produce a lot of food should sell it to poor countries and relieve them of the burden of producing their own food, so, thank goodness, they can leap directly into the industrial era. It has not worked. It may have been good for some of my farmers in Arkansas, but it has not worked. It was a mistake. It was a mistake that I was a party to. I am not pointing the finger at anybody. I did that. I have to live every day with the consequences of the lost capacity to produce a rice crop in Haiti to feed those people, because of what I did. Nobody else.

Of course, that’s only the tip of the iceberg as far as this country’s interference in Haiti, not to mention all the other blowback from NAFTA, which he campaigned against as a candidate but then supported as President.  (Barack Obama is not the first Democrat who ran to the left and governed to the right!)  NAFTA, after all, had the same consequences in Mexico and the rest of Latin America as it did in Haiti, collapsing self-sufficient local economies and displacing millions of people, who went streaming to the big cities of their own countries and across borders to this country, where the Faux News approach has been to blame these refugees for what our government did to them. Blame the vicitim….right.

And lastly, Drug Czar Gil Kerlikowske, when interviewed, of all places, on Faux News, about the possibility that California might legalize and tax not just medical but all marijuana use, responded

Why would anybody pay taxes on a substance you can grow in your back yard?

Good point, Gil.  Let’s hear it for the local option!  That’s all for tonight!

Greg Brown–Spring Wind

HANK AND BILL’S EXCELLENT BLACKMAIL SCHEME

It was a blackmail scheme, for sure.  “THIS IS A SERIOUS CRISIS!  Give us what we want or we’ll trash the economy, (and maybe declare martial law)  THIS IS A SERIOUS CRISIS,” was the mantra of all the talking heads in the Bush junta–hardly the way to calm a serious crisis, more like the way to fan the flames.   Congress blinked, and gave them the money, and agreed to overlook the fact that Paulson and Bernanke (and their godfather, Alan Greenspan) were the ones who ran the economy into the ground in the first place.

If Bernanke and Paulson had a shred of integrity, they would have offered their resignations.  If they were traditional Japanese, they would have committed seppuku….(hey, I can dream, can’t I?) but no, they’re neocon men from Wall Street, aka American Fascists, so they just asked for more money. That’s a fundamental rule in the neocon playbook–never, ever, ever admit that you screwed up.  No way anything they did could have been what trashed the economy, nossir.

They admitted that $700 billion was a number they pretty much pulled out of their asses. They even admitted that this was something they’d seen coming for a while.  But somehow that didn’t matter when they said, “pay up NOW, on THESE TERMS or we’re all screwed!”  (even though they’re not actually going to start handing the money out until mid-November!)  They had America by the short hairs and everybody knew it, and so the Senate and ultimately the House  squawked and grumbled and grew the proposal from three pages to over four hundred, with a few half-assed conditions thrown in, plus a lot of bribes to get people to feel a little better about the whole ugly mess–a hundred and fifty billion dollars worth of tax breaks for everything from toy wooden arrows to solar panels.  Talk about perversion!

But hey, if they didn’t, Bush might declare martial law–after all, Congress gave him the power, since he was gracious enough to ask for it, and a brigade of US Army regulars has recently been reassigned to the US from Iraq, and are busy training in “non-lethal crowd control”–rubber bullets and tasers, which have proved lethal to plenty of people in their time. Uhh..anybody seen the Posse Comitatus act lately? Hmmm……but there’s no significance to that, no, none at all….just give us the money in small, unmarked bills, like what you gave us for Iraq…..

And what did these neo-con artists propose to buy with our seven hundred billion dollars?  Worthless assets that banks created and got stuck with in the course of the Ponzi scheme that has been the American economy ever since Bill Clinton crammed NAFTA down our throats and America’s manufacturing economy literally went south.

Seven hundred billion dollars worth of bad mortgages.  Seven hundred billion dollars for overvalued, trashed-out, abandoned houses, many of which would not sell for a dollar at public auction.  Houses that it will cost money just to tear down.  Actually, the financial instruments are so Byzantine that owning the debt on the house may not convey title to the house, so that means we’re not even getting the lot under a trashed-out house, we’re just getting a piece of paper, and good luck ever selling it for anything besides making “Save your CDO certificates/The United States Will Rise Again!” posters.

Hank and Bill will be generous with our money, giving the poor bankers whatever price they claim those mortgages are worth, but basically, Congress voted to spend seven hundred billion dollars on–nothing.  We couldn’t afford thirty-five billion for childrens’ health care.  We can’t afford to take proper care of Iraq war veterans.  We can’t afford to rebuild our country’s infrastructure in a way that will mute the effects of climate change.  We can’t afford health coverage for all.  None of those things we really need will cost seven hundred billion dollars, all would have a clear payback, and in fact will save not only our money but our asses to the tune of far more than seven hundred billion dollars, but we can’t afford them.

Seven hundred billion dollars is what we spend every year on imported oil, and we can afford that.  Seven hundred billion dollars is about a quarter of what the war in Iraq is likely to cost us, maybe less than a quarter. The tax cuts for the wealthy that the Bush junta pushed through have cost the government about four hundred billion dollars a year since 2003, for a total of two trillion dollars and counting, but none of the high muckamucks in our government seem to have any qualms about the cost of any of that.  Hey, that’s all money into (or at least not out of) their pockets, and besides, they own the presses, they can print more dollars if they need ‘em.  Sure, they’ll be worth less (worthless?  or just worth less?  who knows!), and foreign governments and other investors may be a lot less interested in taking them, but the asses of the wealthy have been covered, and that’s what counts to the neo con-men.  They will all be going off to someplace safe, leaving you and me to go down with the ship–and the bills.

Oh, and just in case Obama gets elected and has any ideas about doing anything creative, this will tie his hands, just like his pledge to continue the “war on terror” by escalating in Afghanistan will tie his feet.  Smooth move, Mr. Rove!

There are a few sops thrown into this bill.  Some of them could mitigate the chilling effect this bill will have on our national budget, if Obama’s government is progressive and courageous and not just a replay of the Democratic Leadership Council-led Clinton years that set us up for this mess.  Now, maybe I’m crazy to expect courage from the Democrats at this point, but if Obama’s Secretary of the Treasury has the nerve, he can, instead of buying bad bank assets at high prices, buy preferred stock in the banks, so that the government will then own them in exchange for bailing them out.  As bank owners, the government can change bank policy–and fire the scheming, selfish jerks–I mean executives–who got us into this mess.  Paulson has this option, too, but you can bet he won’t take it.  He’s not gonna sell his banker buddies down the river.  From all indications, Obama is going to feel the same way–his main economic adviser is Jason Furman, who thinks Walmart has been great for the economy and free trade is a wonderful thing.  La-la land stuff, y’know?

The bill also suggests that banks could renegotiate their nonperforming loans and mark them down to the real value of the homes involved, but that’s like asking Dracula to pretty please quit sucking the blood out of people.  He ain’t gonna do it.

If they wanted to provide some real relief, they could have outlawed eviction, directing banks to negotiate a reasonable rent with folks who can’t make their mortgage payments.  They didn’t do that.  They could have loosened up our country’s newly draconian bankruptcy laws, which Joe Biden championed and which make it all but impossible for individuals to get out of debt,  but they didn’t.  Individuals need to take responsibility for their actions, but big rich banks can count on having the government to fall back on.  That seems to be the lesson here.

Oh, by the way, one of the main reasons people fall behind on their house payments, besides losing their jobs due to corporate downsizing, is falling into debt and out of work due to serious illness or injury and consequent serious medical debts, even with insurance.  But we are not going there, people, we can’t afford to do anything about that, no way–we got rich bankers to bail out–they’re more important than you common folk, dontcha know?

Congress capped the income and bonus payments to the top five executives in companies that accept a certain level of federal help, but you can bet there are loopholes in that provision.  They also kept in most of Paulson’s original bid for dictatorial powers, saying that he could only be challenged legally if Constitutional grounds are involved.

What the bill does not admit is that home prices in this country are seriously inflated, and need to come down to reflect reality.  The other thing this bill does not admit is that there are going to be more economic crises after this one, and the government has just used its last ammunition.  In fact, as I write this, the headlines tell me the Down Joe average is, yep, down seriously, and that more economies around the world are in trouble.

Whatever comes next, we as a nation are now too strapped to do anything about it.  Make sure you’re stocked up on food and have a way to cook it, and get set for some real fun.

music:  James McMurtry, “We Can’t Make It Here Anymore“

NEW N!@#$RS

So, there’s new n!@#$rs in America….people even African-Americans can look down on.  No, I’m not talking about hippies.  We’re old news, and few enough in number to be mostly invisible.  I’m talking about Latinos.  Nashville is likely to pass an ordinance that insists that English is the “first” language of Davidson County, and that says Latinos have to let whites and Negroes ahead of them in line at drinking fountains.  It’s  a toned-down version of a bill that would have made English the only official language of Davidson County and forced Latinos to drink at separate fountains.  Just kidding about the fountains.  I hope.According to the Nashville Scene, local right-wing talk radio host Phil Valentine said that the US should just shoot anybody caught crossing the border illegally.  As far as I know, there are no plans to prosecute him for these remarks, although if he were a Muslim talking about killing Americans who invaded Iraq, he would have been dead meat himself.   After all, Iraqis are dealing with the Americans who crossed their border illegally by shooting them and blowing them up.  What’s sauce for the goose, eh?

At a recent anti-immigration (i.e.,anti-Latino) rally, the Scene reported that a local black minister railed against the new occupants of the bottom of the social pyramid.  It must feel good to have someone white folks will cheer you to dump on after all these centuries.  One question, Reverend—who would Jesus dump on?

The Scene reports that since word got out that the Marshall County Library has a handful of books in Spanish, and a Hispanic employee who teaches English and computer skills to Latinos, the Library has received a steady stream of angry phone calls, such as “I will no longer use the library as long as Hispanics use it.”  Viva Jose Crow!  Of course, the people who object to the English lessons are the same ones who want “English only” to be the rule.  Logic be damned, our turf is at stake!

And what an ironic turf battle it is, when you think of how we got this turf, and who the Latinos really are.  Our ancestors came here, uninvited and unwanted, in a massive, genocidal wave of immigration that overwhelmed North America’s truly native nations. The Spanish, while they enslaved the native people of Central America, never really eliminated them—and so most Latinos are, ultimately, detribalized indigenous peoples, the cousins of the tribes we destroyed.  This continent is much more their home than it is ours.  No wonder some white folks get so shrill about Latinos and their “threat to our culture.”  Historically, this is the Latinos’ continent, and theirs is the older culture.

The other, likewise largely ignored, irony of this situation is its genesis.  In the early nineties, Democrats and Republicans agreed that creating the North American Free Trade Agreement and the World Trade Organization would be good for business—and what’s good for business must be good for the people, right?

Wrong.  Corporate profits soared, alright, but they soared as major companies jettisoned an estimated thirty million American workers and moved manufacturing out of the US into countries with lower wage rates and environmental standards.   On the other hand, U.S. farm products, no longer kept out of Mexico and Central America by tariffs that protected the livelihoods of small farmers in those countries, flooded our southern neighbors, drying up the economies of rural communities.  At first, the unemployed masses flocked to the maquilas, factories set up by US companies to take advantage of lower wages to manufacture goods for resale into America; but then the lure of even cheaper labor beckoned and many factories left Mexico and Central America for China, leaving millions of Latinos  financially desperate.

Meanwhile, the US has been experiencing a “boom in the service sector economy, ”  and a bit of a boom in the housing market.  “Service sector jobs” is a fancy way to say, “being a servant.”  Now, “service,” can be an act of worship, but in this case it boils down to the likes of flipping burgers or running a cash register, jobs which just about any warm body can do and which pay accordingly.   55% of all jobs in America now pay less than $13.50/hr; 40% pay less than $10/hr.
It didn’t used to be like that.  In most places, it takes the upper end of that to provide minimum support for a small family—what’s called “a living wage”; when it takes both parents working full time to support a family financially, you start creating social and psychological problems that are far more costly than the income generated.

The  housing boom has occurred as the twenty percent of Americans who are getting richer build themselves ever-cheesier McMansions.  These people believe in stretching their dollars as far as they can—so they are always happy to hire the person who will work for the least amount of money, no matter their country of origin or legal status.  Americans who are in the job market bring with them the preferences and expectations of citizens of the wealthiest large nation on earth.  They would like a living wage (generally over about twelve dollars an hour), a chance to get ahead, and some kind of benefits, thank you.  Mexicans are coming from a country where well-paid factory workers make about thirty dollars a week.  Seven-fifty an hour beats six dollars a day, don’t it?

So, the thing that happens when you go from six dollars a day to seven-fifty an hour is that, because you know how to live so cheap, you end up saving a lot of money and sending it home to Mexico.  The most recent estimate I could find was for 2004, when Mexicans sent sixteen billion dollars back to Mexico, more than large corporations invested in Mexico.  This money is not filtered through large corporations.  Nobody is getting rich off it.  It goes directly into the households of about a quarter of the population of Mexico, mostly the poorest quarter of the population of Mexico.

So, when a bunch of racist smartasses start talking about sending all the Mexicans home, they’re not thinking very long term, or very clearly.  Every wealthy person in Mexico understands that the US is Mexico’s safety valve.  Make all those people go back to Mexico, or even a sizable percentage of them, and subtract the money they’re sending home, and Mexico will blow up and things will be even messier.  Think, “what if Iraq was on the southern border of the United States?”  Aside from all arguments of compassion and justice, the pure self-interest of not having a failed state on our southern border is enough to keep any sane politician from doing anything too stupid and drastic.

But, can we count on sane politicians not doing anything too stupid or drastic?  The recent history of the US is not reassuring!  Let’s not forget that those Democrats everybody is now viewing as saviors are, by and large, the same batch who voted for the free trade agreements that created this mess to begin with.  Maybe they’ve learned their lesson; certainly many of those who were elected this year ran on “save American jobs/end free trade” platforms.  Will their resolve stand up to K street’s blandishments?  Steny Hoyer, who will be the Democratic Speaker of the House, is known as “the chief K St liaison for House Democrats,” according to the National Journal.  He has promised that there won’t be “an orgy of business bashing”  in the new, Democratic congress.  Charles Rangel, who will chair the Ways and Means Committee, has promised to work closely with business lobbyists on trade and tax reform.  And what about immigration?

The issues are inextricably linked.  The hapless Latinos who are risking everything to get into this country to find jobs are not the bad actors in this drama.  They are just trying to take care of their families, and they would rather be home with their families than mowing your lawn or shivering through our winters.  The bad actors in this play can be found in the boardrooms and legislatures of America, where policy is fixed in a way that tilts the playing field ever more sharply in favor of the already wealthy, and the bad actors are taking advantage of people’s ignorance to turn poor,  exploited whites, blacks, and Latinos against each other and prevent us from uniting against our common enemy—the selfishly wealthy.  When enough Americans come to our senses about this con game, the resulting political earthquake will make last month’s electoral shakeup feel like a minor tremor.

Buffy St. Marie, Now that the Buffalo’s Gone

IT’S STILL THE ECONOMY, STUPID! (AS WELL AS THE ENVIRONMENT)

I must confess I suffered from a severe buildup of paranoid fantasies coming up on this election. War on Iran, massive vote stealing, riots, martial law—I was feeling downright apocalyptic. Would Bush use his new powers to declare Cindy Sheehan an “enemy combatant”? What about Harry Reid? What about…ME??

What a relief that none of it happened—or hasn’t happened yet, anyway. Too many people were too mad and watching too closely for any major funny business. The day after the election, at his “Ding-dong-the-Rummy-witch-is-dead” press conference, Bush sounded so shrill—was it just a symptom of how desperately he wanted to go on a drunken bender, or did somebody in the CIA have his balls in a vise? Will we ever know?

Then again, maybe they just let it go because they figured it was time to get out while the getting is good. The economy is teetering on the brink; let the Democrats catch the blame when it collapses, while the Bush family shuffles off to Paraguay—did you hear about that? Apparently Poppa Bush is buying a huge tract of land down there. If it was good enough for the original batch of Nazis….

Hey, Kennebunkport’s gonna be under water, but not central South America—and besides, the Paraguayans don’t have much in the way of extradition treaties with the U.S. Maybe Rummie will join them down there—there’s already talk of indicting him for war crimes in Germany now that he’s lost his diplomatic immunity. No, he didn’t commit war crimes in Germany, that we know of, except for maybe an extraordinary rendition or two, but German law allows anyone who’s committed war crimes anywhere in the world to be held accountable in Germany. For some reason, they’re real sensitive about that over there. Something about Nuremberg…..

Meanwhile, America is about to go Weimar, or at least Argentine.

Our trading partners in Asia are starting to think they’ve bought enough dollars and U.S. securities and now it’s time to diversify their holdings. The Chinese, especially, are cooling their eagerness to prop up the U.S. economy, which for a number of years has “grown” via the mechanism that China is loaning us money to buy things from them, and then layering it further by loaning the US money to pay back earlier loans. This economically dysfunctional relationship is drawing to a close, it seems. If the rest of the world expresses its lack of confidence in the U.S. by ceasing to buy our Treasury bills, then all the Democrats’ plans about social security, health care, and college will go in the toilet. That’s the bad news—the good news is that our country’s ability to finance overseas military adventures will also be curtailed. So, the Dems had better push that increase in the minimum wage through soon, because it could become meaningful to a lot more of us sooner than we’d like to think.

There are rumblings coming from a lot closer to home, too. Savings have largely been replaced in this country by ownership of real estate, but the housing boom in America is beginning to cool, and people are finding themselves paying more for their homes than those homes are worth—and, as employment contracts still further, finding themselves unable to pay for their homes at all. The bankruptcy rate, which punitive anti-consumer legislation was supposed to slow down, is approaching the level it was at before the Republicans tilted the field in favor of lenders.

Here we see the unintended consequences of the greed of the medical system, as more than half of all bankruptcy filers cited medical debt as a major reason for their plight. The medical parasite is causing life-threatening damage to the organism. It’s that simple, and that complicated. It affects not only individual Americans, but Medicare, Medicaid, and private insurance as well. Will these players gang up on the medical business, now that the Democrats, who are marginally less supportive of endgame capitalism, are in charge? Maybe.

Now, it’s possible that the Democrats’ recapture of the legislative branch of our government will inspire our overseas creditors to cut us some slack, at least for a while—but the Dems will have to at least attempt to reverse the Bush junta’s financial overindulgences—Bush still has the power to veto such reversals, so any real reform will have to wait until after 2008, which is a long time in the life of an economy. Will the Democrats have the spine to do this? Most of them supported the various so-called “free trade agreements” that started destroying America’s economy, and many of them are in thrall enough to big business to still be in denial about that. Bush’s tax cuts were just the icing on the cake.

My advice? Pay off your debts if you can. Grow a garden. Make sure your home is energy-efficient. If you have investments, do like Dick Cheney and move them overseas as much as possible. The recent election may have saved us from fascist weirdness, but the financial weirdness is just beginning.

music:  Steve Earle, “Ashes to Ashes“

VOTING RITES AND WRONGS

I confess: I flaked out. I voted electronically—and on a Diebold machine. I asked for a paper ballot, tentatively, “Can I still get a paper ballot?”, and they said they couldn’t give me one, and I decided not to make a fuss. I had just enough time to vote quickly before my dentist appointment if I didn’t make a fuss. I really wanted to get to my dentist appointment…..yeah, right! Well, I did…consider the alternative…ouch! Whoa, I’m digressing already….

I did ask if there was a paper trail, to which the election officials cheerfully replied, “no!” Well, this was not an election that anybody was likely to jack—the only close statewide race was the Republican Senate campaign, where two foaming-at-the mouth fascists, Bryant and Hilleary, were unable to stop the Lamar-Alexander-clone smoothtalking fascist, Bob Corker, from winning. It wasn’t even close, since the two foaming fascists were unable to curb their egos and figure out who should step aside to go one-on-one with Corker. Together they outpolled him by a slight margin. Maybe this is an opening to get Republicans to back instant runoff voting? Anyway, nobody was complaining about the validity of that election, and I’m sure they would have kvetched if they thought it would do them any good. I hear there was a local race out in East Tennessee where it appears that in some precincts every single voter turned out, and, guess what! most of them voted for the incumbent! With no paper trail to back the voting machine’s assertions, it is going to be difficult to figure that one out, although the 100% turnout in a local/primary election has been labelled “statistically unlikely.”

In one local state house race, longtime Tennessee House member Edith Taylor Langster was unseated by metro councilwoman Brenda Gilmore. That was in the district next door to mine, and the election was not even close, so it was probably honest, eh? Brenda campaigned on a platform of more economic development in her district, which makes me uneasy for the green spaces left in my quarter of Nashville.

The good news/bad news was that the “Memphis meltdown” didn’t occur; many anti-electronic voting machine campaigners were hoping that the twelve-page ballot would combine with Harold Ford’s popularity in Memphis to create long lines and lots of complaints, but no such luck.

The twelve page ballot was kind of a joke. There were very few choices to make, truth be told. Most races were uncontested, and many asked for a yes or no vote on appointing some guy I didn’t know anything about to a job whose description was unclear to me. I like to think I’m better informed than the average citizen, but nowhere in my normal perusal of the news had I encountered most of the names I was being asked to judge. I mean, I hadn’t even seen their campaign literature. Actually, I probably voted against my own best interests in many of those cases, because I voted to approve a whole flock of judges and I am reasonably certain that every one of those judges would not think twice about enforcing laws against victimless crimes that could in theory be applied against me. But, I digress. Again.

One of the Terrible Things About Russia that was drilled into my head as a child was that there, they had choiceless elections, because dissent was brutally suppressed. Wow—we’ve managed to do the same thing here just by creating widespread apathy—although police drug raids involving officers with concussion grenades, body armour, and automatic weapons might count in some quarters as brutal suppression of dissent—but not in any court in Tennessee, you can just about bet. And there I was, blithely voting for judges who would put me away and think “good riddance.” I embarrass myself at times.

Well, the cavalry is sounding their trumpets in the distance. What a racist metaphor! How ’bout, there’s help on the way? Paradise waits, yeah….

Bobby Kennedy, Jr. has filed the lawsuits he promised, but for legal reasons it’s all being kept very hush-hush, officially. Unofficially, Bradblog claims that Kennedy has filed fraud lawsuits against Diebold—not about the results of any election, nothing partisan, no, simply claiming that the machines did not perform as advertised. And what was it they did? Well, it seems you could program them so that when someone pushed a button that was supposed to vote the straight Democratic ticket, the machine would record a vote for every Democratic candidate but the President. You could also program them so that any vote for a third party presidential candidate would be recorded as a vote for Bush.

OK, you Democrats, you were right. A vote for Nader was a vote for Bush. At least on some voting machines. But on other machines—maybe some of the same ones–a vote for Gore or Kerry was a vote for Bush, too.

Bobby is reputed to have insiders at Diebold who are willing to testify on these issues, and I’m sure that’s some of why this case is so shrouded. I would be very, very nervous if I were one of those Diebold insiders. They could have Karen Silkwood-type accidents.

So, Bobby isn’t swinging for the fences, as I trumpeted last month—or rather, he doesn’t appear to be. It’s just a little ol’ bunt down the third base line….just pulling one string that’s going to start the whole fabric of the American political landscape unraveling.

Meanwhile, down in Mexico, with no electronic voting whatsoever, they’ve had a stolen election and millions of people are out in the streets—demonstrating peacefully, so far, thank goodness. Many American writers are praising the Mexicans’ spirit, saying things like, “not only are they showing us how to work, they’re showing us how to be concerned citizens of a democracy.” Everybody wonders why you can’t get a million and a half concerned Democrats converging on Washington.

I’ll tell you why—it’s because we Americans are too chained to our treadmills to peel off and put our asses on the line, and because the Mexicans are already out on the street anyway. Know what I mean?

Too many of us (and I mean us, me included) are too sucked into our paycheck-to-payment lives, running as hard as we can to stay in our middle-class place, to go sit down en masse in Washington and demand that those in charge quit padding their own nests and do something to pull the planet out of its nosedive. Let’s face it–we’re all afraid of the financial mess we’d come home to if we dropped what we are doing and embarked on an indefinite political demonstration, even if in some way we succeeded in our political goals.

Mexicans, especially Lopez Obrador’s supporters, have already lost that middle-class place, if they ever had it to begin with. NAFTA has destroyed the low end of the Mexican economy, leaving millions of people with a choice between street peddling, heading for el Norte, or raising hell. “When ya ain’t got nothin’, ya got nothin’ to lose,” if I may quote Bob Dylan, far from his original context. So—camp out in downtown Mexico City for a few weeks—or months? no problemo—might as well be homeless there as anywhere, eh?

So, maybe we’ve still got it too good to raise a fuss in this country….I do, anyway. Maybe some day, I—and we—will rise to the challenge.

(music: Robyn Hitchcock, “Filthy Bird”)

Comments

Every eight years, we are invited to vote Yes or No on appointed Supreme Court Justices and Appellate Court Judges. (Not sure what parts of those titles were unclear to you.) The reason you didn’t see any campaigning from them is that these positions do not campaign for office. The judicial retention system (called “The Tennessee System”) is not typical around the country. Most appointed judges never have to face voters in any way. Our high court judges have the chance of being voted out, though it has rarely happened.
Posted by Joe Lance on 08/14/2006 02:50:16 AM

thanks for the clarification–there were also a bunch of democratic party committee posts and things like that…how does one keep track of these judges? thanks again m
Posted by brothermartin on 08/15/2006 01:18:41 AM

IMMIGRATION NATION

Nashville just had what may have been its biggest protest demonstration, ever. Those of us who have grown accustomed to seeing the same three hundred people at demonstrations over the last decade were left with our mouths agape at the turnout for the march protesting the proposed criminalization of illegal immigration—as many as fourteen thousand people. Even the organizers of the march were surprised—in a pre-rally story posted at the Tennessee Independent Media Center, they said they expected two thousand marchers—which would still have been one of the largest demonstrations in the history of Nashville. I mean, this town does not turn out.

But the kind of stuff my friends and I have been publicly squawking about for years is abstract compared to what our Latino cousins are facing. A majority of the U.S. House voted to make it a felony to be in this country illegally, and anyone who helped those so-called felons—family, friends, humanitarian assistance organizations—without turning them in to the authorities for imprisonment and ultimate deportation would likewise be guilty of a felony. Passage of such a measure would demand the apprehension, arrest, imprisonment, and deportation of not only the eleven and a half million illegal immigrants in this country, but of possibly millions more individuals, some of whom would be deportable, and some of whom would be native-born Americans who would instead be caught up in the snares of the federal justice system, which is already overloaded by its attempt to enforce our country’s unrealistic drug laws. And speaking of our unrealistic drug laws, these delusional immigration policies are being championed by none other than drug warrior supreme Jim Sensenbrenner, a member of the house from Wisconsin, who may regard imprisoning eleven million illegal aliens as a warmup for imprisoning twenty million marihuana smokers…but I digress….

If Mr. Senselessbrainer, Tony Tancredo and their unrealistic ilk have their way, millions of Mexicans and other Central Americans will be dumped back into their home countries, where they have no way to earn a living; the already tenuous economies of these countries, deprived of the huge sums illegal immigrants send home to support their families, would collapse even further. All of Central America would start to resemble Haiti, and Haiti—you don’t want to think about it.

With its police forces beefed up to handle this mass detention, and concentration camps—I mean detention facilities—set up to handle the arrest of nearly five percent of the country’s population, the land of the free would become a police state. I mean, not since the Nazis declared the Jews persona non grata has a country intentionally set out to incarcerate so many of its inhabitants. There have been stories floating about Halliburton being contracted to establish detention centers—we in the antiwar movement thought they were for US—silly us, they’re for the Mexicans, and for those of us in the antiwar movement who happen to help out illegal immigrants on the side—which, actually, might be a lot of us. I confess, I have. Come and get me.

And, with so many prisoners, would the government start contracting out our captured Mexicans to perform labor? After all, taking eleven million people out of the workforce would create a major labor shortage. Back to the lettuce field, Jose, but this time the government’s collecting your paycheck…

Or maybe the war on immigrants would be like the war on terror and the war on drugs—lots of spending on executive salaries and hardware, occasional high-profile arrests, but no serious attempt to round up everyone —just another club to threaten people with, one that only gets used when it’s politically convenient for the party in power.

Those who want to tighten up our borders make a lot of noise about illegals choosing to come here, without really examining why they choose to come—just as they like to spout about Muslims who hate our way of life, without looking at why—so maybe we should look at WHY these people come here.

Well, as Willie Sutton said when asked why he robbed banks, “That’s where the money is.”

And why is the money here? It’s here because Americans have been very clever about concentrating capital, but not so wise about sharing it with the less fortunate. The immigration issue is not new—Woody Guthrie wrote “Deportees” in 1948, with the lines

Some of us are illegal, and some are not wanted,
Our work contract’s out and we have to move on;
Six hundred miles to that Mexican border,
They chase us like outlaws, like rustlers, like thieves.

Things got worse after the passage of the North American Free Trade Agreement, which enabled cheap U.S. farm products to be sold in Mexico and ended the Mexican government’s protection of its small farmers. The result has been devastating for rural Mexico, as people face the double bind of having no money in an economy that demands money. Even the maquiladoras, the big factories just inside Mexico that were built to import into the US, and other industries that first moved out of this country into other Central American countries, are moving on as their owners respond to the lure of cheaper labor in China and other parts of East Asia, thanks to the United States and our World Trade Organization. All you folks who are sentimental for a Democrat party administration, remember it was Bill and Al who pushed that through.

So, like moths to a flame, the tired, poor, huddled masses yearning to breathe free come to America—they see our television, they think they know what to expect. Hah.

Mr. Bush, who appears to be more liberal—or is it just realistic?–about this issue than many Republicans, has cast it in terms of “jobs Americans won’t do.” That’s not the complete phrase—the real deal is, “jobs Americans won’t do for the kind of wages employers are willing to pay.” Employers like to spread the myth that higher wages for workers will have to mean higher prices for everyone, but simple economic analysis reveals that in most situations, there is plenty of room to raise wages without having a substantial impact on prices. Besides, when poorly-paid people get raises, they tend to buy basic consumer goods, which boosts the economy—except for the fact that most consumer goods are made in China these days. Oh, well.

On the other hand, are there really Americans willing to do the jobs that illegals are doing, at any rate of pay? The seven million unemployed Americans have in theory been displaced by eleven million illegal immigrants, but the geographical facts of life probably defuse this comparison. Would you leave your family in the rust belt and move to California to pick grapes and chop cotton? Would you move your family to California to do that? Twenty-first century Okies, anyone?

This is a complex issue, and there are a lot of people insisting on simple answers. They are going to be disappointed. People complain about deteriorating school and health services and blame it on our newest, frequently illegal, immigrants. The truth is that our schools and hospitals are in decline because the current government would rather play Rambo and cut taxes for the rich than take care of the least of us. They often proclaim their Christianity—the Jesus I know said, “howsoever ye treat the least of mine, is how you treat me,” and I think he’d be more likely to scourge Pat Robertson out of the temple than anoint his brow with oil—but I digress.

“Guest workers.” They want “guest workers”–people who are not going to be citizens of this country who will do our dirty work. What does it do to democracy and participation in the civic process to create a permanently disenfranchised underclass? “Guest workers”? They have those in Saudi Arabia and Dubai, don’t they? Is that the kind of country we want to become? A small, fabulously wealthy elite supported by a vast, disenfranchised underclass? That’s where we’re heading. The rich are getting richer and not just the poor but the middle class are all getting poorer. That’s about three-quarters of the country losing it. The auto companies’ dumping of their workers is just the tip of the iceberg, folks. Trickle down economics, right? Only, what’s trickling down is yellow and it smells baaad. This is WTO working, this is GATT working, this is NAFTA working, this is the World Bank doing what they all set out to do—put the U.S. on the same playing field as the rest of the world. You know when American high-tech workers will be competitive with Indian and Chinese high-tech workers? When we’re willing to accept the same kind of wages they are. All these trade treaties are effecting the economic genocide of the American way of life.

But—our much-touted American way of life is based on ripping off the rest of the world. “Middle class” in America is about new cars every few years and sending your kids to college. In most of the world, middle class means you’ve got a spigot in your front yard that gives you potable water that you can haul inside in a bucket to cook and wash with. We have been flying very high for a very long time, it’s a long way down, and in my darker moments I think we may just have to get used to it. The only way to solve the illegal immigration problem may be for this country to become as impoverished as the rest of the world—then there’s no impetus for people to come here looking for work, right?

That’s all the more reason to start building local economies. Large corporations are leeches that suck the money out of communities in order to enrich their management and stockholders. Until we can redistribute those ill-gotten gains, we need to do everything we can to create a personal, face-to-face, non-corporate economy, one that keeps money in the communities it supports. This is not a program that takes a bureaucracy to administer; it just takes a lot of different people in a lot of different places figuring things out among themselves. Storm clouds are gathering, folks, it’s time to get to work. All those Spanish-speaking people who come out of the deep poverty down south have practical skills that we just might find mighty welcome in the years to come. Se habla espanol?

music: Steve Earle, “What’s a Simple Man to Do?”

Comments

For the most part I’d say you’re right on the money. But one thing I’d like to comment on is your view on “guest workers.” I am a spanish speaking white American deeply involved with the Hispanic community. One misconception about most Hispanics is that they want to become citizens or permanent residents. That is not the case. They [most] just want to be able to work here legally, with no problems, and to be able able to travel back and forth from this country to their homeland with no problems. That would be a “guest worker.” Although this situation is something that most undocumented workers would prefer, another situation arises that creates a lack of laborers in their native land, less taxable income, less local investment and entrepreneurial ventures, split and damaged families, fatherless children, abandoned wives seeking new romances… the list goes on and would be rather too long a conversation to take on here.
Posted by Caryn H on 04/24/2006 10:11:02 PM

Thanks for your perspective. From what you are saying, and from my own contacts with folks who have come up from Mexico and Central America to work, (and my own experience of having to leave the depressed area I lived in for economic reasons) I gather that most of them would prefer to stay home with their families and communities, but that this is a financial impossibility. I think the real solution is to re-create economically viable, self-sustaining cultures there as well as here, and I ain’t talking maquiladoras or Chinese timber deals! I bet it would be cheaper than current enforcement proposals and a share of the military budget. I have no problem with their desire to stay connected with their home culture, I just don’t think that having a lot of people in this country who “just work here” is good for the country.

ON THE WATERFRONT

There has been a tremendous hue and cry lately about the prospect of the government of the small, oil-rich Arab state of Dubai collecting the profits from running six of America’s east-coast seaports. I think there is an issue here, but it’s not the one everyone’s talking about. It’s not about the Arabs. It’s about the ownership.

The sad thing is that for most people, it is about the Arabs, and that is an unfortunate and embarrassing prejudice. Arabs, and Muslims in general, have a bad rap in this country, a reputation that is not particularly connected with truth. For example, Hamas’ victory in the recent Palestinian election sparked a similar outcry. “These people are depraved! They’re electing terrorists! That’s not what we meant by democracy, dammit!” Many American Muslims have been deported or prosecuted, and numerous charities shut down, for channeling support to this so-called “terrorist organization.”

Does Hamas target Israelis with violence? Yes, they do, and I think that’s reprehensible. I am a radical fundamentalist Gandhian, at least in some respects, and I don’t think angry violence is the answer to angry violence. But that’s just a small part of what Hamas does. Their religious practice commits them to scrupulous honesty, and that is what has endeared them to the people of Palestine. Palestinians know from intimate daily experience that Hamas is not on the take—that’s why so many American Muslims were supporting them, at least until our government’s crackdown. They knew that money donated to Hamas would go to people who needed it, not to some wealthy middleman.

Similarly, Dubai Ports World has an excellent reputation for running ports, a business fraught with opportunities for fraud and bureaucracy. That is probably one of the reasons why the U.S. government didn’t forsee any problem with handing management (and profit-taking) over to them. As I said, the real problem here is foreign ownership, and the consequent foreign destination for any profit from those ports.

This is not a new or unique situation. Foreign companies, individuals, and countries have been buying up U.S. assets for years. For example, according to the IRS, cited on the website .economyincrisis.org, the following percentages of U.S. businesses are foreign owned:

Sound recording industries – 97%

Commodity contracts dealing and brokerage – 79%

Motion picture industries – 75%

Metal ore mining – 65%

video industries – 64%

Wineries and distilleries – 64%

Database, directory, and other publishers – 63%

Book publishers – 63%

Cement, concrete, lime, and gypsum product – 62%

Engine, turbine and power transmission equipment – 57%

Rubber product – 53%

Nonmetallic mineral product manufacturing – 53%

Plastics and rubber products manufacturing – 52%

Plastics product – 51%

Insurance related activities – 51%

Boiler, tank, and shipping container – 50% and the list goes on….
So, why has this happened? And what does it mean?

We have Al and Bill to thank for this one, folks. I’m sorry, all you Democrats, but this one happened on your watch. Think WTO. Think GATT. Think NAFTA. Think about that vast sucking sound Ross Perot used to talk about.

When Mr. Bush was in India recently, he fantasized about increasing U.S. exports, but the sad truth is that, thanks to all those treaties us wildeyed crazies tried to stop back in the late eighties and early nineties–all those treaties that the 1992 election should have been a referendum on and wasn’t, thanks to the Democratic Party–the U.S. doesn’t has nothing to export anymore.

Well, not quite nothing. We’ve got lots of bonds and dollar bills to export, and you can bet that those trillions of dollars the rest of the world has loaned us will be paid back with American assets—what companies are left, hard assets like port facilities, and, ultimately, land—urban, rural, forest and field, we owe, we owe, so off our assets go. All those Indians running motels are just the beginning. And when our assets, corporate or material, are owned by foreigners, the profits go overseas, and we will become third world peons, peed on by the man, exploited for the benefit of rich people somewhere else—Dubai, China, it doesn’t matter, it ain’t here.

Yes, this sucks. Get used to it. This country has been running the world economy with a Ponzi scheme, selling bonds to pay the interest on the bonds we’ve already sold, and all those chickens are coming home to roost. Dubai Ports World has decided to find American buyers for P&O’s American assets, but they may have a hard time doing that, because only one of the major players in the port operation business is American these days. There is a strong likelihood that these ports will end up being operated by Dick Cheney—I mean, Halliburton.

The ironic thing to me about all this is that who really ought to be running these various ports doesn’t seem to occur to anyone…how about the port cities themselves? Duh!? Has neoliberal privatization become so much the norm that public ownership of public assets is totally off the table? Many of these port cities are struggling to provide basic services for their citizens—doesn’t it make sense to put the proceeds from port operations back into the city around the port?

Stepping back a notch, I have to wonder how much of the international trade going through these ports is really necessary, and how much is just pushing beans around for the further enrichment of the already wealthy. When I learned that the U.S. exports as many almonds to Italy as we import from Italy, I just had to shake my head. Who decided it would be OK to burn the diesel fuel to make that one happen? I bet they weren’t even thinking about the diesel fuel….

Under a Green program of local self-sufficiency, there would very likely be a lot less world trade. When you take the current paradigm to its logical conclusion, soon enough the major resources that are traded internationally will be depleted, and there will local insufficiency rather than self-sufficiency, and a lot less world trade. Which way would YOU like to have it?

music: James McMurtry, “We Can’t Make It Here Anymore”

JIM SCREWS THE POOCH

Jim Cooper is Nashville’s congressman. Jim Cooper, as many of you are aware, helped put CAFTA over the top. Jim Cooper also voted for the Bush junta’s tort reform bill, which made it more difficult for individuals to call corporations to account for malfeasance, and for Bush’s bankruptcy reform bill, which made it much more difficult for people in debt to get out from under crushing debt loads—typically, it seems, hospital bills or credit card tabs that were pushed over the line due to unexpected hospital bills. This makes it hard to tell Jim from a Republican, which is especially galling when you consider that Nashville is far and away the most liberal/Democratic city in Tennessee. Him? Us? It doesn’t add up, except in the light of the fact that the tremendously energetic wave of anti-war sentiment in the Democratic party in 2004 resulted in the nomination of John Kerry, a pro-war candidate—and that Howard Dean, who was in the vanguard of the anti-war movement, has said since becoming chairman of the Democratic Party that he wishes Mr. Bush success in his policies in Iraq. That kind of bait-and-switch jazz is why I’m a Green, not a Democrat.

So, yes we are looking for a Green Party candidate to challenge Mr. Cooper, because I think the people of Nashville deserve better than him, and I’m not holding my breath waiting for a righteous Democrat. What are they going to do, clone Dennis Kucinich?

What CAFTA does, is expand NAFTA, the North American Free Trade Agreement, which involved the U.S., Canada, and Mexico, to the countries of Central America. NAFTA had a tremendous negative effect on the U.S. economy, resulting in the loss of about three quarters of a million jobs to Mexico, but only for a few years—because Mexico is now losing many of those jobs to China. Oops. NAFTA also opened up the Mexican grain market to U.S. imports, driving down the price of grain in Mexico and further destabilizing that country’s agricultural system, making it harder for small farmers in Mexico to support themselves—in a country where subsistence agriculture, also known as growing most of what you eat yourself, is a way of life for millions.

Many people predict that CAFTA will have a minimal impact here in the U.S., because the combined economies of all the Central American countries put together don’t amount to a hill of beans compared to the U.S. economy, and besides all the jobs that could leave the U.S. have left already. Burger King and Walmart can’t outsource their sales forces, but you know they would if they could.

Sometimes I have kind of perverse thoughts about those lost jobs. I heard a story the other day about a couple that used to work in a clothing factory in North Carolina, about how happy they had been to be making $40,000 a year with both of them working after twenty years with the company—and I did the math—twenty thou a year is about four hundred a week, that’s ten bucks an hour after twenty years. Here in Nashville, the living wage level is calculated to be about eleven dollars an hour. Wow! It’s a tribute to human adaptability that these folks could feel happy about making dreck wages doing an incredibly boring job for all those years, exploited by their bosses who then just threw them away when they found some people in Mexico—and then China—who were even more exploitable.

To be even more perverse—I think that in some ways America is better off without a class of factory wage slaves—just as Mexico and China would be—the big thing is to help people find some more fulfilling way to spend their time. I have worked in factories. Have you? It’s an incredibly degrading way to waste your life. The cameraderie of factory workers is like the cameraderie of prisoners. The switch from home workshops to factory work in the early 19th century helped create the alienated culture that we all suffer from these days—not that pre-industrial Europe was a paradise by any measure, but if you want to create real “family values” the first thing you have to do is make it so mom and dad don’t go away every day and leave the care of their offspring to underpaid strangers. Of course you also have to back up at least one step and make sure mom and dad are sane enough to raise sane children.

Here’s what I think we need to do: we need to put a 100% tax on all personal income and corporate profits of over $100,000 a year, and use the redistributive power of the federal government to give every adult $20,000 a year in guaranteed income, no matter what—you can stay in bed all year and still collect it, or you can go out and work and make more money if you want to. This will eliminate the need for most petty crime, as well as the number of stupid, low-paying jobs that people only take because they have to. As for hauling the garbage, well, we can make it pay pretty well. We need farmers and trash haulers a lot more than we need stockbrokers and corporate lawyers.

What this will do is give people the leisure to discover what they really want to do. We need to couple it with a national wellness and health care program that will teach or encourage people to live healthily and take care of them if they do fall ill. And with the environment in the mess it’s in, a lot of people are going to have health problems in spite of their best efforts.

You may be wondering if there is the kind of money around that could guarantee everybody twenty grand a year—i just did the math, and the gross domestic product of the U.S. is over 11 trillion dollars a year, which yes, is plenty enough to give every individual from Paris Hilton to the nameless homeless guy their twenty grand. I think that democratizing our national income would result in much more intelligent decisions being made with the money than now happen, since what happens now is a few people have way more money than they know what to do with, and it’s making them crazy. The compassionate thing to do is confiscate their excess wealth so all those poor, overstuffed Republicans can regain their sanity.

So this is a long way from Jim Cooper betraying the working class by voting for CAFTA. I’m sure it’s not what was on his mind when he voted against it. I called and asked his office why he voted for CAFTA, but they have not returned my call. Maybe Bush threatened his family. I don’t know. Until we get a Green government and a guaranteed income, we need to enable people to earn a decent living, and in any case we need to be the ones who make what we use, rather than hauling clothing and other household goods halfway around the world so a few people can make a lot of money. Sorry, Jim Cooper—you screwed the pooch one time too many with this one.